HANG TIME HEADQUARTERS – Judging only by the smiles they were wearing over the weekend, the Miami Heat look like any other NBA contender prepping for the playoffs and a deep postseason run.
That five-game losing streak from last week is history. The Heat snapped it with a Thursday night win over the Lakers. They pounded the Hang Time Grizzlies (gruesome footage above) Saturday for good measure.
Now comes tonight’s second and final (regular-season) shot at the league-leading Spurs. If the Heat really want to shut their critics up, they can do it with a win over the Spurs. They talked last week about the showdown with the Lakers being a huge, must-win game. But that had as much or more to do with them shaking off the funk of that losing streak than it did with the competition.
This game against the Spurs is a different animal.
This same Spurs team demolished the Heat March 4, handing them their most lopsided loss of this season in a 125-95 pounding in San Antonio. The Spurs drained a franchise-record 17 shots from beyond the 3-point line, a performance even Spurs coach Gregg Popovich acknowledged was “ridiculous.”
But the sting was real for the Heat. It was the third straight loss in that five-game streak and appeared to be the first time they really were rattled as a group, coming the night after they’d blown a huge lead and lost to Orlando at home. Losses to Chicago and Portland, also on their home floor, followed that Spurs beating.
It’s no wonder Erik Spoelstra‘s team was reeling this time a week ago. He cited “mental fatigue.”
Their minds should be clear now, though.
Chris Bosh found himself in the win over the Lakers.
“Crap to awesome to awesome,” is the way Bosh described the feeling from game to game to game last week. “In this game, you have to have a short memory. All games aren’t going to be the best. You’re going to have highs and lows. Tuesday [against Portland] we didn’t come out with what we needed to, and they made us pay. All this crap started coming out. But we stayed together, kept working. Thursday, we had a good win. It felt good to get the monkey off our back.”
Dwyane Wade, LeBron James and Bosh all combined to dominate the HT Grizzlies, with a huge assists from new point guard Mike Bibby (5-for-5 from deep, 17 points), setting up a playoff-caliber showdown tonight (8 p.m. ET on ESPN) that should serve as the perfect appetizer to a week filled with March Madness action and the NBA’s version (this is win-or-go-home time for playoff hopefuls in the pro game as well).
“The expectation of us going out and playing at a high level every night was wearing on us a bit,” James told reporters after that win over the Grizzlies. “It was only going to take one win for everybody to let their hair down and relax. We have been able to do that the last two [games].”
The ultimate test awaits tonight.
The Spurs are in town. The Heat should be rested and relaxed. The opportunity to make yet another statement, and push that funky feeling from last week deeper into the background, is there for the taking.
